As a science teacher, I cover renewable and non-renewable resources, so this dovetailed very nicely into what I do. As more information comes in, students will get to analyze how geography, season, and type of energy affect the rates that are charged.
In terms of sending information, all I have asked is for the energy provider, type of energy, location, and base price. Since people have provided me with names, I have included that, as well. Compilation is a simple table addition. I have purposely left other operations out (cost averaging, etc.). Again, this is to allow teachers to use the information as needed.
I ended up choosing to include the (partial) name so that submitters could take ownership in the project.
Because most students in a given class (prior to full
deregulation) will have the same suppliers, currently this is set up to be a
class-by-class project.
Some positives that I have seen so far is that there is the kind of variation that I expected to see in rates from place to place. I believe that, as we discussed, Michael, when more information over a greater span of time is gained, you will be able to see larger seasonal-geographic variations.
There are two major weaknesses that I have noticed. The first (obvious) one is that this is both summer and short term. It made finding volunteers a bit of a challenge. I got no hits off of Global School. I think advertising will be much easier and productive during the school year.
The second and, I believe, more major weakness is in format. Billing is irregular in format, at best. I have been studying other ways of collecting information and have not come up with a way better than base rates. Deregulation will not make this any easier. I am considering asking participants to take their total gas/electric/oil bill and divide by the total units used (Kw-h/CCU/Therms). I do not, however, want to make it overly difficult to provide information, thereby causing prospective participants to shy away from the project.